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Man Booker Prize: Richard Flanagan the lone Australian on award long list

Updated
Thu 24 Jul 2014, 1:32 PM AEST

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Richard Flanagan's acclaimed novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, made the Booker long list.

Australian author Richard Flanagan has made a long list of 13 for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

To be a writer is to journey into humility and to know a lot of defeats, so something like this is entirely unexpected.

Richard FlanaganTasmanian author

The Tasmanian was listed for his acclaimed novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about prisoners of war (POWs) on the Burma railway.

The novel was inspired by Flanagan's late father, Archie Flanagan, who survived being a POW on the Thai-Burma railway.

"I wish I could have told him [about the nomination]; it mattered to him that people remember what happened in places like the death railway, and he hoped this book might in a small way would help that happen." Flanagan said.

It is the first year the prestigious literary award has been open to all authors writing in English and published in the United Kingdom.

The change that scrapped the old rule limiting the 46-year-old prize, which carries a 50,000 pound ($90,100) award, to novels written by citizens of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, was criticised on grounds that Americans would come to dominate it, squeezing out other talent.

But in announcing the long list, Booker Prize Foundation chairman Jonathan Taylor said that by making the change, "the Man Booker Prize is reinforcing its standing as the most important literary award in the English-speaking world".

Richard Flanagan 'stunned' by Booker nomination

Flanagan said he was "stunned" by his nomination.

"This has become the great global book prize, and to be in that company is a great honour," he said.

"To be a writer is to journey into humility and to know a lot of defeats, so something like this is entirely unexpected."

American writers hold four of the slots on the list - Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, Siri Hustvedt and Richard Powers.

The prize committee said 154 books had been entered for this year's prize, and that would be further whittled down to a short list of six books to be announced on September 9.